Bach Performance Practice,
1945 - 1975: A Comprehensive Review of Sound
Recordings and Literature
by Dorottya Fabian
University of New South Wales, Australia.
October 2003.
42 illustrations and 17 music examples.
Hardback, 328 pages, 234 x 156 mm.
Including a CD consisting of brief excerpts
from various performances of the Goldberg Variations,
Brandenburg Concertos, and Passions from published
recordings discussed in the text.
ISBN 0 7546 0549 3.

In this book the author
explores that most fascinating revolution
in the world of music. The rediscovery
and restoration of authentic Baroque
performance circumstances occurred mostly
during the third quarter of the twentieth
century, particularly as evidenced by
sound recordings of music by Bach. Naturally
there is much more to this story, and
the book has considerable value as a
bibliography of essays and books on
historical performance practice and
historical instruments in general. She
actually begins her narration in the
earliest part of the century well before
1945, and includes some comments on
what happened afterwards. A remarkable
facet of her exploration is that from
the very earliest times all responsible
persons involved have publicly admitted
the utter impossibility of ever reproducing
historical conditions with any exactitude,
the best that could be achieved being
a gesture, an approximation, a suggestion,
an exploration; but an immensely worthwhile
one.

The author has compiled
a comprehensive list of recordings of
Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.
Missing from her list is the 1949 Fritz
Reiner recording with soloists from
the New York Philharmonic Orchestra
on CBS/Columbia label LP which was one
of the first to include a high trumpet
brilliantly played by William Vacchiano,
and Sylvia Marlowe as harpsichord soloist;
it was one of the best selling in the
United states in the 1950s and the hit
of my college days and afterwards as
it was reissued successively on various
bargain labels and is available today
on historical CD issue.

Also she fails to include
either of two versions by Hermann Scherchen,
both the 1954 recording with the Cento
Soli Orchestra of Paris, and his 1960
recording with members of the Vienna
State Opera Orchestra, "Willy Boskovsky
concertmaster," both of which are
in print. The Cento Soli recording has
perhaps the slowest final movement for
concerto #4 ever recorded (6’05"),
the overall length of the concerto coming
in at 18’40"; she lists the Karajan/BPO
recording, timed at 18’10", as
the slowest she is aware of.

Fabian refers to the
second disk only of the 1960 recording
in her end-of-book summary as "MCA
80121" giving the recording date
as 1959, listing Willi Boskovsky as
soloist, and stating "no other
soloists listed." Clearly she has
a copy with defective packaging since
my two-disk complete set [MCAD2 9831]
lists all the soloists and gives the
recording date as March 1960, as does
the Scherchen discography by René
Trémine (pub. TAHRA Productions).
Clearly, Brandenburg #6 is played by
soloists only, while #3 sounds like
it has extra strings to double parts
as well as a solo chest. The #4 in this
recording has the longest second movement,
6’13", and is slower over all,
at 20’30," than any she has listed.
Since in her table she performs statistical
analysis on the timings of the movements,
inclusion of these data points could
change all her numbers.

Omission of a recording
or two could hardly be considered a
serious flaw, except that Scherchen
is not an eccentric who can be ignored,
but was one of the central figures in
the historical performance movement,
pioneering not only in Bach recordings
but in using small orchestras and choruses
for Handel, Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn
as well. Although Fabian has many and
extensive comments on Sherchen’s vocal
recordings throughout the book, unfamiliarity
with his total oeuvre would be
as serious a flaw in any survey of historical
performance practice as would be, say,
unfamiliarity with Harnoncourt.

The Reiner Brandenburg
recording was popular precisely because
it was one of the first to use harpsichord
and high trumpet and went far to create
an audience for future recordings which
ventured further into the area of authenticity.
Interestingly it was produced by the
same musicians and at about the same
time as the famous Louis Kaufman Vivaldi
Four Seasons recording, in its
time a daring example of original performance
practice, and shows that New York musicians
were important in the historical performance
movement.

It is of course a trap
to consider the overall timing of a
movement to be an expression of exactly
how fast the movement is played, because
added or omitted repeats or prolonged
or truncated fermate, for instance,
can skew the correlation between timing
and pulse. She rightfully avoids this
in many instances by referring instead
to the measured metronome pulse.

In listing the Haas
recording with the English Chamber Orchestra,
she does not mention that the solo harpsichord
in #5 was played by Robert Veyron-Lacroix,
although she includes similar information
for other recordings in her list. Again,
I don’t mean to suggest that a few omissions
invalidate her work, however it is disconcerting
that, in an expensive work that claims
to be comprehensive and authoritative,
a person so casually interested as I
can at once detect lacunae.

Fabian refers to a
harpsichord with the capability to change
registers by means of foot pedals as
a "pedal harpsichord" whereas
one would assume she would mean by that
a harpsichord with 16’ rank and separate
pedal keyboard. She deduces that Zusana
Ruzickova played a Neupert harpsichord,
whereas I am sure I recall a listing
to that effect on one of Ruzickova’s
recordings, making conjecture unnecessary.

In her list of performances
of the Goldberg Variations stopping
at 1975 means she does not include the
Fernando Valenti recording. Valenti
was the most popular harpsichordist
of the 1950s, his recording being all
the more remarkable since he was using
a different instrument, a smaller instrument
than the one he used to record his legendary
series of Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas.
The recent burgeoning number of recordings
of the "Goldbergs" on pianoforte
by the likes of Perahia and Schiff,
attest to the works’ durability in the
medium of piano literature, and the
author later admits this point. A similar
point might be made for the six keyboard
Partitas.

I used to be a harpsichord
snob myself, so I am sympathetic to
that attitude. The assumption that only
the harpsichord is appropriate for Bach’s
keyboard music can no longer be accepted
uncritically, and to her credit Fabian
is flexible about this point. Certainly
by 1748 it was clear to any musician
with a grain of sense, and Bach is generally
accredited with at least that, that
the pianoforte was the instrument of
the future. A nearly airtight case can
be made that the second book of the
Well Tempered Clavier as well
as Art of Fugue and the Musical
Offering can be taken to be works
conceived for pianoforte. The Goldberg
Variations from 1742 are clearly
a watershed consideration, but one could
argue that the continuing success of
pianoforte performances of the work
in the past as well as the present time
constitutes a Heuristic demonstration
of what Bach had in mind. For this reason,
use of a harpsichord for late solo keyboard
works cannot be taken ipso facto
as evidence, or the use of pianoforte
as lack of evidence, for respect for
original performance practices.

On page 72 we find
the following paragraph: "It is
important to add that the early examples
of a homogeneous, mostly simple registration
(especially the performances of Leonhardt
1953, Walcha and Kirkpatrick) do not
otherwise represent an historical style
of playing as conventionally understood
today (2002). Rather, they (as well
as Newman much later) exhibit a literalistic
approach, which could reflect the belief
that playing the correct notes on the
‘right’ instrument is all the music
needs to ‘speak for itself’—and in this
case any harpsichord might be
acceptable, as long as it is not a piano.
In an attempt to second-guess the motivation
of those using varied registrations
(e.g., Richter, Malcolm, Pelleg, Payne)
I would venture to suggest that their
approach—which I labelled 'post-romantic'
earlier—might represent the solution
to a conflict of personalities within
the performer; the ‘interpreter’ pitted
against the ‘scholar’. The latter is
convinced that the piano is not an appropriate
instrument, but the former is frustrated
by the ‘limitations’ of the harpsichord
(see the earlier citation from Hubbard).
To me it seems plausible that while
searching for expressive means and a
compensation for the blunt tone of their
‘surrogate instruments,’ artists like
Richter, Marlowe, Malcolm, Ruzickova,
Galling, and others turned to a Regeresque
sound ideal, rich in sound colours and
dramatic changes of registrations. Not
having enough information at their disposal
about historical harpsichord technique
and baroque means of expression, registration
might have remained their only interpretative
vehicle."

This paragraph shows
the author to have a badly flawed understanding
of artistic impulse. In the first sentence
she lumps Leonhardt, Walcha, and Kirkpatrick
together in one parentheses and sends
my jaw to the floor. Three more diverse
artists could hardly be imagined — the
schoolteacher, the lofty mystic, and
the Italian street player. Does Fabian
mean to tell me she cannot tell the
difference between them? Or that the
difference, at least for the sake of
this argument, means nothing? Assuming
the latter, she then goes on to psychoanalyse
artists who pursue organ technique —
changes of register — on the harpsichord;
unwilling to grant them artistic taste,
she must categorise them not merely
as ignorant, but desperate to find compensation
for inadequate personalities. The thought
that they may have, with intelligence,
knowledge, and genuine artistic sensitivity
and impulse, come to different conclusions
than the majority of academics of a
later time seems not to occur to the
author.

I must at this point
summarise the arguments against her
and her selected sources. If a majority
of instruments in museums are of a certain
type, I suggest that instruments which
end up in museums were not played. Instruments
which were played a great deal eventually
collapsed to kindling and were burnt
for firewood. Large harpsichords, one
such as was owned by Bach, did not survive
because they were rebuilt as pianofortes,
and we would expect very few historical
examples. It may be true that there
were few instruments in Baroque times
having three or more registers, which
had knee levers and hand pulls instead
of the much more expensive foot pedals
to change registers and engage couplers.
In this sense, in Victorian times most
keyboard instruments were parlour spinets
and uprights. Must we then be prohibited
from playing Mendelssohn’s Songs
Without Words on a concert grand
piano because such instruments were
relatively uncommon in 1847? It must
be pointed out that the reason pianos
were invented is because harpsichordists
were unhappy with the limitations of
the harpsichord sonority. The people
who bought pianos were harpsichordists
who wanted more expressiveness and greater
variety of tone colour. Some of these
same people bought large harpsichords
with multiple easily changed ranks and
couplers. They were not neurotics or
defectives, they were people who basically
liked harpsichord sound and wanted to
explore the lengths to which it could
be taken. An artist in the modern age
who does the same is engaging in historical
performance practice, showing us something
that was not merely possible, but was
actually done, and might even by enjoyed
by modern audiences. This is not ‘post-Romantic’
but rather ‘late Baroque’.

Most lovers of Baroque music can remember
a period some decades past when nothing
over a single 8’ rank was allowed, and
the possibilities of expression were
all but nil. Bereft of anything but
a single weak tinkly sound, the players’
only remaining means of expression was
all kinds of distortions of tempo and
phrase, and endless series of maiden
blushes, retards, slipped and anticipated
beats, complicated patterns of staccato.
Compounding the problem, artists sometimes
recorded on museum instruments with
which they were not familiar, leased
at high cost only for the recording
session with no extra time available
for practice. Most of these recordings
never sold well and have disappeared.
What worries me is that if Ms. Fabian
and her cohorts have their way, the
magnificent recorded legacy of Marlowe,
Malcolm, Ruzickova, and Valenti may
also disappear. A tape master recording
has a practical life of about fifty
years. Acetate disks can turn to powder
in thirty years, vinyl pressings stored
under perfect conditions may last eighty
years. Recordings made in the 1950s
are today in serious jeopardy of literally
falling to bits. In the face of scholarly
hostility, I have made it a personal
mission to restore these recordings
to the digital medium while these disks
can still be played, and I am making
good progress. If I don’t do this, by
the time people catch on to what they
are missing, the recordings may be —
literally — gone and we will have nothing
but scholarly sneering to describe them.

One such sneering critic
is quoted as describing "the constant
dancing upon the pedals". In fairness,
the number of recordings that could
reasonably be described this way can
be counted on the fingers of one hand,
and some of them may have been considered
experimental, e.g., Sylvia Marlowe’s
Handel Harpsichord Suite #7,
first movement; the other movements
of this suite and the other pieces on
the same disk were played much more
conservatively. She was having a romp,
not establishing a norm for all performances.
Neither Fabian nor her sources describe
the use of swell shutters on harpsichords,
and I would like to know more about
that, just who and when. I can hear
them operating in recordings by Valenti,
Malcolm, and Dart, but who else used
them? What are the historical precedents?

On page 84 she takes
another swipe at what she calls "pseudo
harpsichords." Please understand,
I am not shooting the messenger. Ms.
Fabian is expressing not exclusively
the opinion of others but her own opinion,
and with considerable force. However,
lest you think I intend to trash her
entire book, let me praise her discussion
in the following section of the use
of various registers of voices in passion
performances. It is informative, clearly
reasoned, and utterly fascinating. When
discussing the relative merits of boys
versus female sopranos she does summarise
the arguments in favour of the former.
What she doesn’t comment on is the ability
of some young women to imitate the sound
of a boy soprano; perhaps this wasn’t
encountered during the time slot of
her study, 1945 to 1975. However, a
few of these young women’s voices in
the midst of a boys’ choir greatly stabilises
the tone and improves pitch and tonal
accuracy, so much so that I think this
practice is now almost the norm. Emma
Kirkby, for instance, has trained herself
to sound either like a boy or even like
a falsettist counter-tenor! Whether
this is authenticity or not, the question
is authentic what?

On page 85 she translates
Bach as "[spring]"
whereas my German dictionary gives "brook,
stream, rivulet," all clear references
to flowing courses, not sources, of
water. Spring in German is Quelle.

There is no discussion
of the observation of repeats as part
of original performance practice. In
1945 the general approach was to ignore
them. Today, omitting a repeat will
get a musician thrown in the dock behind
the butcher with his thumb on the scale
for trying to sell his audience short
weighted music. An important difference
between the 1955 Glenn Gould recording
of the Goldberg Variations, weighing
in at 35 minutes, and the recent András
Schiff performance, weighing in at over
an hour, is who repeats what and why.
Maybe in another book.

Her discussion of ornamentation
begins promisingly with words from many
authorities pointing out that ornamentation
might be different at different times,
and going on with a good discussion
of various ways of discovering the correct
ornamentation of a given phrase of Bach.
But the case is ludicrously understated,
and the fundamental point missed. Baroque
composers did not write out ornamentation,
not because there was a secret code
which "everyone" knew (à
la Tureck), but because even with the
same instruments ornamentation would
be different on different occasions.
The tables of ornaments we have are
all alike in one important respect:
they are all intended for students who
would not be expected to have experience
or mature judgement and thus needed
a bare-bones guide. A given prelude
or fugue from WTKI might be played on
the organ, clavichord, lute, or harpsichord
and would be ornamented very differently
on each. Furthermore, the ornamentation
would be different depending on which
of the popular unequal tuning systems
was in use — a trill or mordent on a
"wolf" note would make it
sound less dissonant. Ornamentation
could be used to improve audibility
of musical lines by helping to match
the instrument to the acoustics of the
music room, which rooms as well as the
instruments in them were widely different
from each other. Even in WTKII, where
the piano is likely the intended instrument,
pianofortes of the time were so different
from each other that appropriate ornamentation
would be radically different from one
instrument to another. And, since instruments
were evolving rapidly, Bach must certainly
have understood that pianofortes in
1758 would be different from pianofortes
in 1748. A scheme of ornamentation would
affect fingering, and vice versa, and
hence the very lilt of the whole phrase,
even on unornamented notes. In the Baroque
period, music rooms were also used for
many other purposes. For the past 150
years there has been much discussion
about "good" and "bad"
halls, that is, halls which deviate
from a consensus standard. Only when
instruments and halls were standardised
could composers such as Liszt write
out every single note to be played,
and write out acceptable alternatives
as well. A good book on this is needed,
obviously much beyond the scope of Fabian’s
study, but she’s heading in the right
direction.

The last half of the
book is dedicated to a fascinating discussion
of such questions as rhythm ("notes
inégale") dotting and double-dotting,
tempo, phrasing, and so on, and how
these qualities may be discovered for
music we’ve never heard played. Fabian
and her sources mention the experiments
in swing beats by jazz musicians. The
curious statement is made that an andante
(which is generally taken to mean "walking"
or "at a walking pace" in
Italian) cannot be syncopated, whereas
anybody who enjoys walking will often
sing or whistle a syncopated tune in
rhythm with his steps. The point that
lies just under all this verbiage is
that a musical phrase from any age of
music expresses the sounds and motions
of the human body. If a person wants
to know how the phrase should go, try
dancing to it, or singing it. Mention
is also made of the rhetorical structure
of music, that is liking musical phrases
to poetry or prose expression. If Fabian’s
book weren’t restricted to discussion
of Bach performance practice, she might
have mentioned Leonard Bernstein’s Norton
Lectures series where he discusses this
very point using Mozart’s music as an
example.

The accompanying disk
is not intended to be entertaining,
but is fascinating, 76(!) tracks, little
snippets of performances, many of them
less than a minute long, first of the
Goldberg Variations, then Brandenburg
Concertos, then the John
and Matthew Passions. The variety
is enormous and they illuminate various
points raised in the book. Perhaps the
most important point proved here is
that all the versions are musical, the
variety of styles a matter of taste
or exploration rather than any sense
of right or wrong, god or bad. Sound
quality in digitisations from analogue
sources ranges from good to abominable,
but I suspect many of these recordings
were available to the author only on
ancient worn LP’s or tape copies. In
the Goldberg Variations section,
neither the Landowska nor the Glenn
Gould recordings are included, among
the most popular recordings of the century,
but also among the least exemplary,
in our current sense, of historical
performance practice. Of course a hundred
such disks could be put together depending
on one’s view of who is important and
what is most interesting.

In summation, I should
say that the author is perceptive and
widely informed and her analyses and
conclusions are incisive and relevant.
Where I disagree or perceive a lapse
I have been unsparing of the author,
and I hope that she as well as my readers
perceive the implicit flattery intended
by my having paid good attention and
intently discussed and evaluated her
research and her points of view.

Another point is simply
to large to be ignored. The printing
press created a revolution because it
made printed books so much cheaper to
own than hand-copied manuscripts. This
book is priced to sell for £55. Were
I a friend and professional colleague
of Ms. Fabian, perhaps she would allow
me to make a photocopy of her thesis;
I could probably accomplish this for
£10, including the CD. Or, she could
make for me a software copy on two CD-Rs
for less than £0.70. Printed books of
this type are in danger of becoming
an expensive anachronism, just like
hand-copied manuscripts became in the
Sixteenth Century. Just what the future
holds none of us knows, but considering
the economic pressures involved, we
sit on the verge of an explosion.

My feeling is that
the omission from consideration of the
Scherchen Brandenburg Concerto recordings
is sufficiently material that Fabian
should publish a journal paper revising
any of her conclusions as made necessary
by the inclusion of the Scherchen recordings,
and should make the appropriate revision
to future editions of this book.

Paul Shoemaker

A detailed and fascinating
look at one of the most interesting
periods in the history of music which
answers as well as raises a number of
interesting questions. ... see Full
Review

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